Infamous America - ALCATRAZ Ep. 5 | “The Greatest Escape”

Episode Date: June 24, 2020

In the waning days of the prison, three inmates perform arguably the greatest prison break in American history. It’s immortalized by Hollywood in the 1979 film, “Escape From Alcatraz,” starring Clint Eastwood. And the escape remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of American crime. For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1962, three inmates escaped from Alcatraz. In 1979, their story was made into the feature film called Escape from Alcatraz. Actor Clint Eastwood played Frank Morris, who was allegedly the mastermind of the elaborate breakout. The story was so incredible it was hard to believe, but it was true. The three convicts were career criminals. Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin had more. multiple sentences and escape attempts between them. A fourth prisoner, Alan West, also played a large role in the scheme.

The men all knew each other from previous stretches in prison. To accomplish their goal, they spent months tediously chiseling out the air vents in their cells. They built replicas of the vents so the guards wouldn't notice their work. They developed amazing ways to drill through metal and seal rubber to make it watertight, fabricate paper-machie dummies of themselves to fool the guards. They thought of everything. The levels of ingenuity and problem-solving are unmatched. The complexity and creativity of their plan might be unparalleled in human history. At 11.30 p.m. on June 11, 1962, their plan worked,

as far as we know. They escaped Alcatraz and were never seen again. From Blackbirdle media, This is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this is the season finale of a series of stories about the most notorious prison in American history. We save the best for last. This is Chapter 5, The Greatest Escape. Frank Morris arrived at Alcatraz on January 20th, 1960.

He was 33 years old. Like so many other inmates on the island, he'd already experienced a life of crime. Frank's early years were hard. His parents died before he was three, and he was raised with strict foster parents. He was convicted of burglary when he was 13, and then again when he was 14. He was sentenced to nearly seven years in a boy's reformatory. His teacher said he was highly intelligent, but difficult to manage.

Frank was prone to violent outbursts, like the one he had when he was 15. An officer caught him stealing fruit. The officer threatened to punish him if he didn't return it. When the officer turned his back, Frank threw a large butcher knife at him. Thankfully, the blunt end of the knife hit the officer and the man wasn't hurt. By the time Frank was in his late teens, his criminal record included crimes like possession of narcotics and armed robbery. He repeatedly caused problems at the institutions to which he was sent, and he routinely tried to escape. In 1955, Frank was serving a 10-year sentence in the Louisiana,

the Louisiana State Penitentiary for armed robbery and possession of narcotics. The farm, as the state prison at Angola, was called, was one of the hardest in the country. Frank and a fellow inmate were cutting sugar on a work detail. They both slipped away, and their escape went undetected for several hours. The fugitives made their way to New Orleans. They laid low for a few months and came up with a plan to rob a bank in Kansas City. Frank and his prison and a third accomplice figured out that the alarm mechanisms were wired to the bank doors. They cut a hole through the rear wall so they wouldn't set them off. When they made it inside the bank, Frank used a blowtorch to cut through two vaults.

The men stole about $6,000, but the FBI caught up with them a few weeks later. Frank was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in a federal prison in Atlanta. But five years after his arrival in Atlanta, officials had had enough of Frank Morris. The Khan had repeatedly tried to escape, and so, shortly after the new year in 1960, Frank became inmate AZ-1441 at Alcatraz. John and Clarence Angling grew up with 12 siblings in a rural community in Florida. They were a close and proud family, but some of the children began committing petty crimes to supplement their meager income. In January 1958, John, Clarence, and another brother robbed a bank in Alabama. They stole nearly $20,000. But the FBI caught up with them five

days later, hiding in a small apartment in Ohio. The brothers were sent to federal prison in Atlanta, where they met Frank Morris. But a few months after their arrival, officials decided the brothers caused too much trouble together, so they sent Clarence to Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. And then, for whatever reason, they transferred John there as well. So it shouldn't have been a surprise to prison officials when John was caught trying to help Clarence escape on October 8, 1960. The plan was clever. John worked at the prison bakery. He cut the top out of a big, tall food container, and then cut the bottom out of another.

When he stacked one on top of the other, they were tall enough to hide a man inside. Clarence concealed himself in the boxes, and John pushed them into the prison elevator. But an officer noticed something was wrong with the odd configuration, and the brothers got caught. Like Frank Morris, prison officials were now thoroughly tired of the Anglin brothers. Between the escape attempts and the other problems, officials thought there was only one prison that could tame the two young men, Alcatraz. John arrived at the Rock on October 22nd, 1960, and Clarence joined him on January 16th, 1961. So now, a year after Frank Morris arrived at Alcatraz, the Anglin brothers were there with

him. They all had cells close to each other on the ground floor, and they got reacquainted. But even before the brothers landed on the rock, Frank was assessing the possibility of the of an escape. John Anglin introduced them to the inmate who became the fourth man in their crew, a man who had a gift for mechanics. Little is known about the early life of Alan Clayton West. He was born in New York in 1929.

His family moved to Georgia when he was a child, and then to Florida. West landed in federal prison for interstate transportation of stolen vehicles, but he earned more time for his many failed and aggressive escape attempts. He arrived at Alcatraz for his second term there in 1958. Two years later, he teamed up with the Anglin brothers and Frank Morris to plan the most famous escape in American history. When John Anglin arrived in 1960, Weston Anglin recognized each other from time they'd spent in a Florida prison.

And now, four clever and motivated cons were housed close together. They started making plans. It was common knowledge among the same. amongst inmates at Alcatraz that there were eight ventilator holes in the ceiling of C-block. The ventilators hadn't been used for years. They were cemented shut. But while doing a paint job, West noticed that one of the vents had not been closed. He examined it closely when no one was looking. He thought that with a little work, it might be a way to get to the cellhouse roof. West also noticed there was a vent duct that ran down the side of the cell house. Around the same time, he was

order to clean up after some plumbers who have been working in a utility corridor. While he was on his hands and knees sweeping up, he discovered some old rusty saw blades and metal files that were left behind from a much older construction job. West told John Anglin about his discovery. For his part, John was already aware of the possibility of escaping through one of the ventilators on the roof. The two considered a number of potential methods of escape and their odds of success. and then how to swim to the mainland.

They determined the best escape route would be to go through the ventilation grills at the rear of their cells. But how could they fit through them? The little air vents were only six inches by nine inches. That's almost exactly the size of a traditional hardcover book. Wes did some research in the prison library. He told John that he'd found a formula for breaking down the composite structure of cement. but it required heating the cement to at least 500 degrees, and maybe to 900. West confided in John that he'd squirled away element wires similar to those of a bread toaster.

He'd plugged the wires into the electrical outlet in his cell, but he couldn't generate enough heat to affect the cement. So they needed a new plan. Throughout the year of 1961, while the Anglin brothers and Frank Morris and Alan West all lived near each other, they routinely talked about breaking out. When West's plan to basically melt the cement around his air vent failed, John Anglin tried a simpler idea. John got a hold of a sharpened spoon and started digging around the vent in his cell.

Clarence and Frank acquired their own spoons. Over the course of several weeks, the three men chipped away at the cement around the air vents. Usually, this started after the 5.30 p.m. headcounted. count and continued after lights out at 9.30. Prison officials had given the Anglin brothers the privilege of having cells right next to each other. Frank Morris and Alan West were also neighbors. They alternated daily digging schedules so that the neighbor could keep a lookout. After a month, all the inmates managed to chip away considerable amounts of cement around their vents. They flushed the excess debris down the toilet or brushed it through the vent into the corridor

behind the wall. Once each hole was complete, they created facades to make it look like nothing had happened. They used a mixture of soap and toilet paper to replicate the chunk of the wall they dug away. They used paint stolen from the industrial arts building to color the mixture to make it look like the wall. Then they made fake air vents out of cardboard. They took great care to construct them and paint them, so they looked exactly like the real vents. Frank Morris and John Anglin finished digging out their vents first.

Since John's cell was right next to his brothers, John helped Clarence by digging from the back of his vent. Alan West decided to keep his grill intact because his was the most visible for anyone doing maintenance detail in the corridor. He saved most of his digging until the end. In May of 1962, Clarence Anglin was the first to squeeze through his vent and then climb a maze of plumbing up to the cell block ceiling. He used a stolen screwdriver to loosen the metal joint that secured the ventilator.

It didn't work. That was Plan A. Plan B was that one of the men stole electric clippers from the barbers shop. He removed the motor to make a drill, but it wasn't powerful enough. So now it was on to Plan C. Alan West heard that the prison's vacuum cleaner was broken, and it gave him an idea. He got permission to repair it, and when he inspected the machine, he found that it used two motors. Using his mechanical skills, he carefully removed one of the motors and got the other to work on its own to avoid suspicion.

He gave the spare motor to Frank Morris, and Frank modified it into a drill. The men tried to use it to drill out the ventilator, but again, it didn't work, and it was too noisy. So now it was on to Plan D. Frank broke off some pieces of his metal bed and fashioned them into a crude wrench. He tested the wrench on the sticky ventilator screws, and it worked. They'd solved the riddle. He loosened the screws, but left the ventilator in place to avoid detection. They'd beaten three major obstacles in their way.

They'd figured out how to get out of their cells, how to conceal their work so the guards wouldn't notice, and how to get out of the cellhouse. They had two big questions remaining. How are they going to keep the guards from raising the alarm the second they noticed the inmates were missing? And the biggest one of all, how were they going to get off the island without drowning or freezing to death? The answer to the first question was to make paper mache heads. According to different reports, they took bundles of white cotton rags and packed soap over them

and held them together with bits of cement. Prisoners were allowed to have artists paint kits, so it was easy to paint the heads the color of skin. Then they stole hair from the prison barbershop and pasted it on top and in places for the eyebrows. To answer the second question, they started collecting raincoats left lying around by other inmates. Sometime in May of 1962, the men started sneaking out of their cells at night and climbing the plumbing to a secret workstation. on the cell block ceiling. They cut up the coats and pasted them together with glue from the prison's glove factory. Over time, they made a six-by-14-foot raft.

Frank Morris modified an accordion-style instrument called a concertina. This would be used to inflate the raft. Alan West was in charge of making life preservers and wooden paddles. He made progress with those duties, but it caused him to fall behind in the remote. removal of the air vent in his cell. He still hadn't completed his digging so he could get out of his own cell. And by the time he did, it was too late. On the night of June 11, 1962, Frank Morris communicated to the others that the ventilator to the roof was loose enough to try to leave. And he'd studied tide charts for months. That night, they had a narrow window to make it to the water

before it would sweep them out to sea. If they were going to go, they had to be. They had to move quickly. But Alan West still hadn't finished digging out the air vent at the back of his cell. Morris and the Anglins had no choice but to leave West behind. If they spent any more time or made any noise trying to get him out, they'd be discovered. So they went on without him. We'll never know exactly how the breakout happened, but here's our best guess. Lights out was at 9.30 p.m. Sometime after that, Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers, quietly crawled out of their beds. They placed the paper-machie dummies on their pillows

and pulled the covers up to make it look like they were sleeping. They crept to the backs of their cells. They removed the cardboard grates from the walls and squeezed through the air vents. When they were between the cell walls, they climbed 30 feet up the pipes to the cell block ceiling. They collected their gear from their secret workshop, the life vests, the raft, the wooden paddles.

Above them, they pushed the ventilator cover off its housing. They shimmied up through the ventilator and popped out onto the roof of the cellhouse. They ran across 100 feet of roof to the bakery smokestack at the back of the building. They carefully scaled down the smokestack, 50 feet to the ground. They hurried down a hill and threw some brush on the northeast corner of the island. They climbed over a chain-link fence under the shadow of the giant water tower that dominated. that end of the island. Then they hurried down to the shoreline. If they still had the concertina with them, they would have used it to inflate the vests and the raft. If not, they would

have had to have pumped up the items the hard way by blowing air into them. When the vests and the raft were inflated, they shoved off from Alcatraz. We know they had at least one paddle with them as they moved out into the dark waters of San Francisco Bay. From there, It's anybody's guess. Their fates are still unknown, and it would be a minimum of eight hours before their disappearances were discovered. Even though Frank, John, and Clarence had slipped out of their cells hours ago, Alan West tried to catch up.

By 145 in the morning, he'd finally removed the air vent from the back of his cell. He climbed up the plumbing between the walls and squeezed up through the ventilator and made it to the rooftop. up. But his accomplices were long gone. With no raft or other means of escape, he was forced to return to his cell. Less than six hours later, the alarm sounded. At 7.18 a.m., correctional officer Lawrence Bartlett walked past Frank Morris's cell. He told Frank to wake up. When the inmate didn't stir, Bartlett went into the cell to nudge him. When he touched the prisoner's head, it rolled onto the floor. Bartlett sounded the alarm. Alcatraz went into complete

lockdown. Guards quickly noticed the Anglin brothers were gone too. The inmates had an eight-hour head start on law enforcement. The FBI rushed out to the island. Their bloodhounds tracked the inmates to the water's edge. It certainly looked like the Anglin brothers and Frank Moors had gone into the bed. Now investigators had to figure out how in the world the men had escaped without attracting attention. And there was one person who could answer that question. Alan West saw no point in keeping quiet. He'd been left behind. He was stuck in prison anyway, so he might as well brag about the ingenious plan. He explained the plan to the FBI. Investigators followed the route of the escapees, and they took pictures of the evidence.

Those pictures are readily available on the FBI's website and many other places. You can see the paper mache heads in the secret workstation and the ventilator grill that led to the roof. Alan West said the last part of the plan was to make it to Angel Island, a smaller island about a mile north of Alcatraz. After resting, they would re-enter the bay on the opposite side of Angel Island and then swim through a waterway and on into Marin County. Once there, they planned to steal a car, steal some clothes, and then they would all go their separate ways. West took credit for masterminding the whole plan. He was immediately put into isolation. And the FBI launched the biggest Justice Department manhunt in the West up to that time.

The FBI and military personnel combed the waters of San Francisco Bay. On June 14th, two and a half days after the escape, one of the search boats found a small rubber packet floating in a tiny whirlpool below the water's surface. It was about 2,700 yards off Angel Island. The packet was made from the same material as the inmate's raincoats, and it held personal items like photographs that belonged to Clarence Anglin. Soon after, searchers found a paddle in two deflated rafts. And then they found a life jacket about 50 yards east of Alcatraz. It had brown stains on it, which were later confirmed to be blood. The jacket's air valve had teeth marks,

indicating that the convict held it with his teeth to prevent air leakage. Officials concluded that the jacket had obviously failed, and the inmate must have drowned. Over the following days and weeks, other items were found. A couple walking along a section of the night. of Beach and Marin County found another life jacket. It was deflated, like the other one, and had a small tear in the scene. Alan West reminded officials that part of the plan was to cut up all the floats once the

inmates had made it to the mainland. Then they'd throw them back into the water to deceive investigators. Either way, no bodies had been found, so the search had to continue. Time ticked by, and Life on Alcatraz returned to normal. and authorities kept investigating. The FBI interviewed the family, friends, and past acquaintances of all three men. They couldn't pinpoint anyone who would have the financial resources or the know-how to assist the men in an escape. And there was no possible way for the inmates to communicate with outside contacts to confirm a date or the progress of a breakout.

The initial report was that no cars were stolen and no clothing stores were burglarized in San Francisco or Marin County, within two weeks of the escape. But a 2015 documentary disputed that claim. It said there was one car stolen in the area on the night of the escape. The men originally planned to go straight north from Alcatraz to Angel Island. But modern-day tide studies show it was more likely the waters pushed them west instead of north. They would have landed in Horseshoe Bay, a little inlet at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge on the opposite shore from San Francisco.

From there, any debris released into the bay, like pieces of their rafts and paddles and belongings, would have floated in the direction of Angel Island, which was consistent with where those things were found. And from the bay, it was just two miles to the city of Sausalito. The men would be freezing cold, wet, tired, hungry, and thirsty. They had no money or disguises. But they had more than proven they were clever and inventive. So who knows? Clarence Anglin's girlfriend later claimed she took them to Mexico.

They had no shortage of contacts on the outside if they could reach them. And a rumor at the prison sparked another fun option to consider. It said Frank Morris knew how to fly a helicopter and might have planned to do so after his escape. But there was no evidence to support that he did. Many people thought the escapees must have made it to shore because no bodies were found. But authorities maintained it was common

for the bodies of people who died in the bay to never be found. Law enforcement pointed to the fact that a man jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge at roughly the same time as the escape. His suicide was witnessed by 62 horrified bystanders, and his body was never found. That was one example of many.

Another factor the FBI cited was that it would be extremely hard for someone swimming in the bay to avoid hypothermia. The bay water temperatures ranged from 50 to 54 degrees. Exposure to the elements would start to affect the body functions after about 20 minutes. The showers at Alcatraz were always supplied with moderately hot water, so the inmates could not try to acclimate to the freezing cold waters at the bay. On July 17, 1962, a month after the escape,

A Norwegian ship departing from San Francisco reported a body floating 20 miles northwest of the Golden Gate Bridge. The entire body wasn't visible, but crew members noted it was wearing what appeared to be sun-bleached denim trousers, similar to the ones worn by inmates on Alcatraz. The FBI said this body was most likely one of the escapees, but the ship was not able to retrieve the body, so we'll never know. The Bureau and other authorities concluded it was likely that Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin suffered the same fate as Theodore Cole and Ralph Rowe, who escaped in 1937. Despite intensive searches, then and now, none of the men were ever found. After decades of investigation, the FBI decided the men could not have succeeded.

It was highly unlikely they survived the waters. But critics point out the obvious. It's possible Roe and Cole did not drown. Maybe Frank Morris and the Anglans survived as well. And over the ensuing decades, evidence surfaced it seemed to support this theory, that defying all odds, maybe one, two, or all three made it to safety and started new lives somewhere else. So the final question is, how? If pieces of their rafts and life vests were found torn apart, how could they have done it?

There are a few clues that suggest possibilities. The people who doubted that Frank Morris and the Anglins could have made it to dry land were forced to re-evaluate their opinions six months after the escape attempt. Two more inmates broke out of Alcatraz. Daryl Lee Parker and John Paul Scott did far less planning than Morris and the Anglins. The Parker Scott escape focused on opportunity as opposed to long-range planning. On December 2nd, 1962, after dinner, Parker and Scott managed to get through a window. They put on water wings they made from rubber surgical gloves and prison shirt sleeves,

and they slipped into the frigid waters of the bay. Fifteen minutes later, officers noticed the pair were missing. Guard sounded the alarm. Within 25 minutes, Daryl Parker was found clinging to a cluster of rocks, 100 yards west of the prison. Two hours later, military police at the Presidio Army base captured John Scott, though it wasn't hard. Teenagers found what they thought was a dead body on the rocks near Fort Point, an old Civil War fortress on the tip of the base right under the Golden Gate Bridge. It was three miles west of Alcatraz.

But the man on the rocks wasn't dead. John Paul Scott was unconscious and in a state of shock. He was immediately taken to the base hospital. He quickly recovered, and by 1045 that night, he was on his way back to Alcatraz. Scott couldn't finish his escape, but he did prove that a convict could swim from Alcatraz to the San Francisco shore. He was 35 years old, and he didn't have the planning or the equipment that Morris and the Anglans had. Coincidentally, his escape happened 25 years to the day after Theodore Cole and Ralph Rowe escaped and disappeared in 1937. Historian Michael Eslinger points out that one of the

greatest ironies of Alcatraz lies in the water surrounding it. The icy and treacherous waters of the San Francisco Bay were the ultimate deterrent to escape for nearly three decades. More if its years as a military prison were factored in. But it was the water that finally contributed to the prison's downfall. Immediately following the escape of Morris and the Anglins, reformers and government officials scrutinized the prison intensely. It was incredibly expensive to maintain, and recent budget cuts made it nearly impossible to pay for an upgrade

to withstand a major earthquake. And it had always been extremely expensive to pay for food and water, which had to be shipped from the mainland. Less than a year after Morris and the Anglins escaped, government officials decided the nation could no longer afford Alcatraz prison. March 21st, 1963, was the final day of operation for Alcatraz. A few journalists witnessed the last small group of inmates leaving the rock. Somewhere, Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers might have read about Alcatraz closing.

In the decades since 1962, there have been many reported sightings of the infamous inmates, both together and separately. If Morris is still alive, he'd be 93 years old. Clarence and John would be 89 and 90, respectively. In 2013, someone claiming to be John Anglin wrote to a San Francisco television station. He said Clarence died in 2008 and Frank died in 2005, though of course there's no way to verify it. The Anglin family continues to field information about sightings of its famous family members. And the U.S. Marshals keep all three men posted on their website as Northern California's most wanted fugitives.

The office dutifully updates their photos with age-progressed images, just in case someone, somewhere, recognizes a friend or neighbor who looks like one of the three men who broke out of the most notorious prison in the United States. Alcatraz. Thanks for listening to some stories of Alcatraz here on Infamous America. Subscribers to our Black Barrel Plus program will receive an exclusive bonus episode about this series. So if you want to join, go to our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, to find links to the plans. And up next on the show, it's a big one. Probably the most requested story since the launch of the show.

It's the story of one of America's most mysterious criminals, D. B. Cooper. That starts in two weeks on the regular feed, and subscribers get the entire series one week early. This season was written by award-winning author Julia Brickland. Primary research by Joey McAdams. Original music by Rob Valier. Editing and sound design by Dave Harrison.

I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcast. or wherever you're listening. Please visit our website, blackbarrelmedia.com for more details and join us on social media. We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram

and B-Barrel Media on Twitter. Thanks again. We'll see you soon.